Summer Sons(99)
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After Sam left with a smarmy reminder that he actually had a job and a brash, smacking kiss to the corner of Andrew’s mouth, he’d gotten dressed in the front room. The brief, semi-public nudity in the pool of sun shining through the front windows made his touch-sensitized skin tingle. Listening to Riley thump around upstairs kept the tips of his ears burning. With purpose, he searched the living room for his car keys. A swoosh-thud sound startled him as he dug the Supra’s fob from between the couch cushions. When he lifted his head, a blush scorched to his collarbones at the sight of Riley’s bundled bedsheets and his underwear waiting at the foot of the staircase.
“If you don’t put those in the wash before you leave, I am going to smother you in your sleep,” Riley shouted to him.
No response needed. With shaking hands, he carried the bundle to the basement, tossed it in the machine, and escaped to the privacy of his car. Andrew was left alone in his head, Sam gone and Riley occupied. Partial thoughts and images chased themselves across his mind’s eye—fighting with West, the list of interviewees to run through, the presence of Troth at the corners of all the spooky shit, the knowledge that Eddie was gone for good, the sour taste in his mouth from failing to brush his teeth after swallowing another man’s come. The fact that he was continuing on—that he was changing, as the night before proved, growing past the static moment in time the revenant would always be trapped inside. The phase shifts were all overwhelming, impossible to encompass.
For a moment Andrew considered letting Riley chase down the academic angles on his own while he took a breather to let last night and everything else settle. But shame pricked him the instant he had the thought; if the act itself hadn’t been a betrayal of Eddie, putting his purpose aside to wallow in it, selfish and indulgent, might be. Without direction, he set off for a drive. First stop, a Starbucks drive-through; second stop, lunch. His car was one of two in the Chinese restaurant’s parking lot at 11:13 A.M. on a weekday. The “open” sign lit above the door read N W S RVING. Dead vowels lay dormant. He stabbed his plastic fork into the carton of take-out lo mein braced between his knees and hung his free arm out the window. Checking his phone revealed that Sam had texted him one time: Called Irene and she said no harm no foul but not to hit her up again for awhile lol as if that supremely awkward lol had the ability to defuse the real tension.
Fair enough, Andrew thought, stuffing a last bite of noodles in his mouth before tossing the container out in the parking lot. Oily sweetness lodged in his throat. He snagged his iced coffee for a bracing gulp. He had no one to tell about what he’d done—aside from the remainder of Eddie, which seemed like the worst idea. Aching to talk to a person, he sent a text to his mother with a brief message: All his estate stuff is finished, I have the old house now and am settling in. You need anything? She answered him as he drove; he snuck a read with the phone held in front of the steering wheel.
No thanks, hon, be safe.
Before the cavern, he’d been close with his parents. After, he’d been close with Eddie. The patterns set between them during Andrew’s adolescence—distance, dismissal, without even the conflict of rebellion—held strong. He felt right at home with the cousins and their estranged families; his barely knew him. As he shifted in the seat, his belt dug into the blade of his hip, recalling with a burst of sensation the restraining heel of Sam’s hand. Decisions he had made and would make again given the opportunity looped under the surface. Putting aside what it meant, desire had come as natural as breathing once he’d gotten Sam’s body on his—as if the last decade of his life had been secretly leading to that moment, and when the time came to choose, he had no trouble letting go.
Riley’s car was gone when he returned to Capitol. Andrew bounded up the stairs without a pause at the landing, promising himself he’d move the bedding to the dryer later. Eddie’s room, stale sheets and old laundry funk, stood unchanged as he stepped inside. Dust coated the secondary monitor and gaming headphones hanging from their stand. The stillness of Eddie’s paused life decomposed with each passing week, eaten away as the reality settled in. No one was coming home. The basket of clothes would remain unwashed, the guitar silent, the beer cans moldering. That immensity was the force that drove dogs to waste to death on their masters’ graves. Whether he believed it was smart or not, he eased his pressure on the thing within himself, allowing the eldritch inheritance to bleed into the dead air.
If he was careful, then he’d be fine. But he needed to see something of Eddie.
He sat, and the mattress dipped behind him with phantom weight as the bell-toll of his power filled out the form of his ghost. The revenant settled spine to spine with him, stiff against the subtle movement of his breath while the sun loomed high outside. He could feel it inviting him to give more, the weeping edges of its outline chewing at the little taste of being he was feeding it clumsily, his barriers trembling against the urge to let go. Only one set of ribs lifted and fell; there was no bridging the gap across time, unless he let loose the way he had in the forest or standing over the trunk of the Challenger. An impression of indefinite fingers sieved through his onto the rucked sheets. Ghastly cold settled brittle in his joints. Breath misted in front of his face. As he considered confessing his indiscretion to the remnant, the haunt vanished with an abrupt pop, reminiscent of adjusting eardrums on an airplane.